The present disclosure generally relates to the field of aviation simulators. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to simulating weather events in an aircraft simulator.
Airline trainers, pilots, and military trainers desire the ability to be trained or to train pilots and other aircraft operators in realistic environments. The simulation of weather radar returns and weather models are typically used as part of the aircraft simulation process. Accurate simulation of weather patterns and events are important to both the training of pilots and aircraft operators and to the development of new algorithms for improving weather radar performance.
Achieving weather models for use with aircraft simulators is presently a time consuming and cumbersome task that often results in inaccurate, imprecise, and/or non-realistic weather simulations during simulated flights. Weather simulations are presently achieved by searching archived weather data, manually viewing the weather data, and manually illustrating multiple layers of weather contours at various points of time to illustrate a three-dimensional progression of a weather event (e.g., a storm cell). A computer then processes the contours into data for aircraft simulator visuals for simulator displays. Other weather simulations are achieved by inputting a series of desired weather event details into a super-computer for processing. The super-computer processing results in data for aircraft simulator gauges and visuals for simulator displays. Both types of weather simulation techniques can be time consuming, manually intensive, and often generate unrealistic weather visuals on simulator displays.
Therefore, there is a need for providing accurate and realistic weather simulations for flight simulators without the time consuming process of manual transcribing of weather patterns and the unrealistic visuals. There is also a need for a search tool that searches historic weather data to locate realistic weather events for aircraft simulators.
It would be desirable to provide a system and/or method that provides one or more of these or other advantageous features. Other features and advantages will be made apparent from the present specification. The teachings disclosed extend to those embodiments which fall within the scope of the appended claims, regardless of whether they accomplish one or more of the aforementioned needs.